Tessie vs MyTeslaCloud: a polished app, or a data layer you own
Tessie’s app really is excellent — we are not going to pretend otherwise. The real split is elsewhere: are you buying a great app, or a data layer that belongs to you.
- Tessie sells a well-built app; MyTeslaCloud sells a database you own. These are different categories, not better and worse versions of one thing.
- At July 2026 public pricing: Tessie Pro is $12.99 per vehicle per month. MyTeslaCloud is $4.99/month or $39.99 billed yearly.
- Five-year cost: roughly $200 for MyTeslaCloud against roughly $780 for Tessie Pro — about a 4× difference.
- Tessie wins on the native app, Apple Watch and Siri. MyTeslaCloud wins on Grafana depth, private database and full export.
- History does not transfer from Tessie — run both in parallel for a while if you switch.
Among Tesla third-party tools, Tessie is probably the best known — native iOS and Android apps, Apple Watch, Siri Shortcuts, home-screen widgets, all very well built. So we get asked regularly: if Tessie exists, why use MyTeslaCloud?
The short answer is that they are not solving the same problem. Tessie sells you a great app. MyTeslaCloud sells you a data layer you own. Once that is clear, the choice usually makes itself.
Quick comparison
| Tessie | MyTeslaCloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Product type | Closed-source subscription app | Managed open-source TeslaMate |
| Where data lives | Tessie’s servers | Your own private DB instance |
| Dashboards | Built into the app | Grafana + modern UI panel |
| Native mobile | iOS / Android / Apple Watch | Web + Mytess (iOS, Watch) |
| In-car browser | Not applicable | Opens on the Tesla screen |
| Data export | Limited | Full database export on request |
| Billing | Per vehicle, per month | $4.99/mo or $39.99/year |
Tessie pricing is public information as of July 2026 (Tessie $6.99 / Tessie Pro $12.99 / Fleet $19.99 per vehicle per month; annual billing saves roughly 17%). Always check tessie.com/pricing for current rates. MyTeslaCloud is built on the open-source TeslaMate project. Feature comparisons are compiled from both vendors’ published material.
1. Where Tessie genuinely wins: the app
This has to be said first or the rest is not honest. Tessie’s native app is very good — glancing at your battery from your wrist, firing a command through Siri, seeing charge progress in a home-screen widget. For the grab-it-in-two-seconds cases, a native app simply beats a web page. If what you want is a faster, richer remote control than the official app, Tessie is a strong answer.
2. Where MyTeslaCloud wins: depth and ownership
MyTeslaCloud is built on TeslaMate, which means what you get is an actual database, not a set of pre-built cards. Grafana lets you slice it however you like: monthly distance, efficiency trends, speed distribution, acceleration counts, charge-depth history, Supercharger ratio, battery SOH over time, and idle drain broken out by Sentry, Camp and Park mode.
Then there is where the data sits. Every user gets a private database instance. If you leave, you can request a full export — standard PostgreSQL that loads straight into a self-hosted TeslaMate. Inside a closed service, your history only ever exists in that vendor’s shape.
An easily overlooked case: selling the car. A complete battery-degradation curve and driving record is a genuinely persuasive resale document. This kind of data gains value with age — which is also why a gap in it hurts so much.
3. Price: subscription vs. a year up front
Tessie bills per vehicle, per month. MyTeslaCloud is $4.99/month or $39.99 billed yearly.
The fair comparison for someone who wants the full analytics experience is MyTeslaCloud at $39.99/year against Tessie Pro at $12.99/month — about $156/year. That is roughly a quarter of the price for the Grafana-based depth. Against Tessie’s $6.99 base tier it is closer to half. What you give up is the native app polish; what you gain is the database.
Stretch the timeline out
The gap is not really about year one; it is about year three onward. At published rates, per vehicle:
| Held for | Tessie Pro ($12.99/mo) | Tessie base ($6.99/mo) | MyTeslaCloud |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year | ~$156 | ~$84 | $39.99 |
| 3 years | ~$468 | ~$252 | ~$120 |
| 5 years | ~$779 | ~$419 | ~$200 |
Figures use monthly list pricing; Tessie’s annual billing discount of roughly 17% is not applied. Both services bill per vehicle, so multiply accordingly.
The point is not that Tessie is overpriced — the native app is worth real money if you use it that way. The point is that if you intend to log for the long haul, the billing model itself is part of the decision, and it is the part people usually skip.
What switching from Tessie actually looks like
Honestly: your history does not come with you. Tessie stores data on its own servers, export is limited, and there is no format that loads into TeslaMate. Better to know that up front than to discover it after cancelling.
So the realistic approach is to overlap. Start MyTeslaCloud logging now, keep the Tessie subscription for a while purely to look back at old records, and drop it once your new curve is long enough to be useful. Setting up MyTeslaCloud is one token paste — a few minutes.
In the other direction, leaving MyTeslaCloud does not cost you the data — it is standard PostgreSQL, and the export runs in a self-hosted TeslaMate. That asymmetry is what "data ownership" concretely means.
Which one to pick
Tessie is the better choice if
- The native app, Apple Watch and Siri integration are what you care about most;
- You mainly want a remote control, not a data warehouse;
- You would rather have fewer, well-chosen views than unlimited ones you configure yourself.
MyTeslaCloud is the better choice if
- You want Grafana-grade analytics you can drill into however you like;
- You want your history in a private database you can export in full;
- You would rather pay about $40 a year than about $156;
- You like that the foundation is open source and portable.
They are not mutually exclusive, either. MyTeslaCloud can do the patient recording underneath while Mytess — which supports Dynamic Island, Live Activities and a native Apple Watch app — handles the quick-glance mobile experience.
MyTeslaCloud is not affiliated with Mytess; orders and support for MyTeslaCloud go through our own channels. Third-party pricing and features verified September 2026 and subject to each vendor’s own site.
